


Becoming

by Wishme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, In the bunker, M/M, fallen!cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:38:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wishme/pseuds/Wishme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One morning he tromps into the kitchen.</p><p>“Hobbies,” Cas says. “That’s what it means to be human.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Becoming

 

After they cleaned his muddy and bruised limbs, after they wrapped him in old flannel and denim, after they fed him eggs and toast, Cas began to search. He had been an exceptional angel. Now, he sought to be an average human.  Sam and Dean laughed at that—nothing in their lives had been anything resembling average—but still he was determined. He demanded an education in popular culture: Dean started him on a regimen of classic and cult movies, Kevin sat him down with a stack of modern movies and comedians, Sam got him hooked on indie rock bands that made Dean groan (even when his foot tapped under the table).  He scoured Good Will racks for slightly-ratty sweaters and worn-but-not-thin jeans, badgered Dean into buying him a pair of good boots on sale. He invested in sunscreen and insisted they apply it before leaving for any road trips.

 

One morning he tromps into the kitchen.

 

“Hobbies,” Cas says. “That’s what it means to be human.”

 

Dean looks at him blankly, egg dripping off his toast, and Sam just grins indulgently into his coffee mug. Kevin laughs until he can’t breathe. Cas grabs the keys to the Impala and swings back through the door.  Toast forgotten, Dean bolts after him, yelling about rolling stops and speed traps.

 

Cas finds a guitar at Good Will and for weeks plucks the strings and refuses to tune them. His rhythm is passable, but his ear not so much. When it disappears he has Kevin show him how to use Youtube. (Sam finds the guitar eight months later in the closet of an “undiscovered” room in the lower levels. Wrapped in one of Dean’s rattier flannels. He says nothing, just closes the door.) First he finds hardstyle dance until Kevin tells him it’s “So Eurovision 2009” and then it’s Mongolian Throat singing until he can’t speak and it _hurts_ and he discovers herbal tisanes. Everyone gets morning tinctures after that, for insomnia (Dean), stress (Sam), anxiety (Kevin).  On one run to the garden center he spends twenty minutes staring at a set of tiny hand-thrown flower pots and then Dean’s driving him twice a week to the community center for classes. He brings home ashtrays (Dean uses the first few for shooting practice until Cas hides the shotgun shells and then they march across the ledge of the kitchen window), a few lopsided vases, and mugs with their names scratched into the handles in Enochian.  Dean’s disappears from the cabinet--it appears next to the photo of his mother. Slowly all their plates are replaced with ones pressed into near-flatness by hands more used to wielding steel than molding clay. Some are glazed with solid color, others bone white and delicate, still others are shocked through with rust and green and cobalt. Variations on hues obsess him until they have a dozen mugs in the varying shades of summer dusk.

 

 

It’s a quick shift there into painting and that’s when it gets absurd. Canvasses clutter the hallway outside the library—he prefers the light and the company in there, even though it’s close quarters—until the paint pours onto the walls, sweeping down the bedroom hallway, an array of prismatic midnight. Dean never asks, but he thinks it might look the way it feels to be in the center of the universe looking out past the dying stars and fruitlessly spinning chunks of rock. Last stroke laid, the ebbing corona of a long-forgotten sun now situated around one side of Dean’s bedroom door, he plucks the protective tape back from the wall, eyes heavy. Sam rustles him to the kitchen where Dean sets down a bowl of tomato rice soup and joins him. Hunter and former-angel, they sit there, counting grains of rice and sips of broth.

 

 

After the hallway he moves to quieter spaces: the gap under the stairs, behind the door to the vault, the undersides of kitchen drawers. Dean finds him teetering on a ladder trying to Michelangelo-and-the-Sistine-Chapel the left corner of the training room ceiling. He patiently holds the rig steady until Cas proclaims the thing done by setting down his brush and then the hunter rails at the man for risking his damn fool head.

 

 

Six hollowed out eggs appear on the kitchen table the next morning at Dean’s seat, lace-like designs spilling over their curves.

 

 

There’s also quiche in the fridge.

 

Sam takes Cas to yard sales and thrift stores to find frames for all the canvasses, helping him hang each one next to outdated maps, under skylights, bracketing portraits of long dead men in gray suits. Paint-stained jeans disappear, and with them the supplies. The smell of acrylic starts to fade and Dean still rubs his dying sun each time he enters his room.

 

Cas sits elbows-to-elbows with Kevin in the library, notes flowing in long lines over pages scattered along the mountain of books. His script slides around Kevin’s neat matchstick lines, as if straining to leave the page and whisper in your ear.  They came up with their own shorthand while the flecks of paint faded from his knuckles.

 

One afternoon, Dean finds the set of paints on top of the familiar coat in the top of Cas’s closet, when he’s looking for the angel’s machete. The tubes are mostly empty, the brushes ruthlessly clean, thrown on top of one another like a haystack. He grabs the machete and retreats to the back porch.

 

That’s where Cas finds him sometime later, lopping growths off a sturdy branch to test the newly-honed edge. He settles next to Dean, comfortably silent. They watch fireflies rise as the sun sinks below the horizon, the last flare of light nearly the same color as the one around Dean’s door.  Dean fishes in his jacket pocket to produce his pocket knife. He flicks open the blade and starts to pare the bark off the branch. “One of the first things you do is get the grain to tell you what it wants to be. You start with the softer woods, they’ll let you do whatever you want, but later you listen to what that oak or cherry has to say. That’s what gives each piece that spark--you’re helping it discover itself; become something new.”

 

Cas nods and Dean hands the branch and knife over. Cas lays the knife along the length, methodically stripping bark. Satisfied, Dean picks up another piece of wood from the pile and takes the machete to it. Knees knocking together, they sit, Cas singing an old Mongolian song to the birds in the dying light.

 

 


End file.
